Some Recent Energy and Environmental News — Australian Fires

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One of the top stories globally has been the horrifically bad bushfires in Australia.

Unfortunately the mainstream media has latched onto that as another “proof” that the world has been infected with “global warming” (e.g. here and here).

What this really proves instead is that what seems to be intuitive is often not true.

Below are some sample reports and articles that undermine the climate change connection claims:

Dr. Spencer: Are Australia Bushfires Worsening from Human-Caused Climate Change?
Video: The Truth About the Australian Bushfires
A scientist’s 2015 Warning (that was largely ignored)
Dr. David Packham’s government submission re Australian Bushfires
Audio: Dr. David Packham on what’s really causing the bushfires
Don’t blame climate change for Australian wildfires
Hijacking Australian Bushfire Tragedies to Fear-monger Climate Change
Australia’s Fires Caused By Bad Forestry And Arson, Not Climate Change
Australia Fires … And Misfires
Australia: It has been hotter, fires have burnt larger areas
Environmentalists Made Australia’s Bush Fires Worse
Why Worse Wildfires (part 1)
Why Worse Wildfires (part 2)
Short video about Australia’s Forest Mismanagement
The Insane True Cause Of Australia’s Bush Fires
The disastrous fires in Australia are man-caused, but not by climate change
Report: Arson Epidemic, Not Climate Change, Behind Australia’s Bushfires
Archive: Green ideology, not climate change, makes bushfires worse
The Green Agenda Is Exacerbating Australia’s Wildfire Problem
In Australia, Fires Expose Green Folly
Australian wildfires were caused by humans, not climate change
Record Heat and Cold Expose Climate Alarmists’ Bias
2019 Australian bush fires same as the great fire of Rome of the year 64
There’s Only One Way To Make Bushfires Less Powerful: Take Out The Stuff That Burns
Natural Resilience: Photos Show The Australian Bush Coming Back To Life Just Weeks After Being Decimated By Fires

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My Family Fled Communism When I Was 6. Now We Fear Our Nightmare Has Followed Us Here

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Following the State of the Union address, I found the state of the nation surreal. I kept skimming past articles about the Democratic Party’s proposed economic stimulus packages, collectively known as the Green New Deal.

They propose to fund unsustainable sectors like solar panels—which are already heavily government-backed—by targeting more self-sufficient industries, like meat production. In order to earmark raiding the cookie jar of productive businesses to fund those that aren’t paying for themselves, Democrats have to demonize the target in order to implement punitive measures such as meat taxes.

I know the Green New Deal is based on non-truths and artfully doled misinformation, like the deforestation myth, but most people believe we are losing forest land in this country to the meat industry. That’s one of the lies told to them by our leaders in order to take advantage of the public support and vote. They need a mob to rob.

How did we get to this choke point of punishing meat consumption, as one NJ radical animal rights activist senator proposes, in the form of a tax?

I think I recognize a pendulum swinging back at me. Mom and Dad left everything they had to bring me and my younger brother to the United States. In this country, I am able to experience freedoms such as shopping for food, owning material things, and starting my own business. But that independence comes with heavy financial costs due to already overzealous, arbitrary, and crippling rules and laws.

As a matter of recent personal developments, I started making my own beef tallow-based cosmetic creams and decided to turn my products into a small business. This process is an ancient form of cosmetic production, and part of the reason I did this was to connect people to the truth. I saw the threat to US food sovereignty—the safest, freest, most abundant, most reliable food producer in the world—coming in the form of untruthful propaganda planted by special interests. It comes in the form of false environmental claims like the threat of cow flatulence or pig feces.

Meanwhile, I work in NYC, and I see a different reality. Those urban-dwelling legislators blame cow and pig waste as they step over garbage on the street with plastic cups in hand. I see human waste in myriad forms coming from congested metropolises.

The waste is in plain view walking past storefronts. Constant construction to remodel commercial spaces after every tenant swap is in plain view. NYC takes at least 45,000 construction applications annually. Think of all the garbage from ripping out floors, walls, and ceilings and replacing them 45,000 times per year.

As city dwellers are packed in so tight in the street that they can’t traverse a sidewalk without bumping into one another like ants on an ant farm, we throw away more than 76 million pounds of garbage per day. Nine pounds per person per day of that waste is produced by people while at work. That’s a lot of to-go lunch boxes, cups, bags, and pulp from fresh juices. To what extent are the waste gases from discarded pulp considered agricultural waste?

I wonder about the environmental impact of a throw-away society. The throw-away society blames the ranchers: “We already pay for recycling and get fined when we don’t, so why shouldn’t they pay, too?”

So far, I haven’t sold one item, and God forbid I do before all levels of government have been duly compensated for ensuring the safety and well-being of the people from the threat of me and my hand cream. The local health department wants to inspect my kitchen “to make sure that your dog isn’t walking around getting hair onto the product or that you prepare your product on the same counter as your chicken.”

They want me to state that I am a chemist because their fee system is based on the number of chemists on staff.They will refer me for registration with the FDA to have my products tested and my work facilities investigated some more. There are fees associated here, too. The government can’t provide free public services for free.

Naturally, the IRS will have to be notified and receive their dues. Now we may have a Green New Deal standing in line for my green, too.

With children in tow, my parents escaped oppression and a lack of human rights—the right to pursue happiness and the right to own property. They also escaped government-controlled death by not having to wait for health care under a communist regime.

Not for lack of resources, total government control in the name of the public interest—with no private business rights—kept everyone equally poor and longing for basic daily resources and comforts, like coffee, fruit, vegetables, meat, bread, dairy, cigarettes, clothes, fashion magazines, videos, and news.

The populace that hadn’t yet died on the inside existed with the frustration of simply not being allowed to live normal lives. They faced the threat of punitive repercussions if they displayed any personal initiative or resourcefulness. Those consequences included regular government raids and confiscation of personal property.

The people waited in line for rations of flour and their monthly maximum of sugar and cooking oil; the political members—ruling elites—feasted on the produce and sheep they plundered from the farmers and ranchers. Then they exported the rest. Romania was the breadbasket of Europe. But it was the black market that supplied the nonconformists and enemy-of-the-state families with the forbidden goods the paternal government deemed unnecessary for the people—smuggled American cartoons and Nutella for the kids and Russian black caviar for a birthday party or gathering to impress connections.

They were the ones who risked getting shot at the border on their way out, for they wanted options for their children, who were considered the purview of the state—another resource to be plundered. Citizens were expected to remain and exist only to act as chattel for the benefit of the state. It was servitude for the good of the people. Socialism had already morphed into stage 4 cancer: communism.

Fast forward 35 years plus 4,751.5 miles, and that nightmare hound is back to nip at the old couple’s heels, sending chills up their tired backs. It is certain that there is a power struggle over our American resources.

Certain special interests have taken it upon themselves to seize control of our abundantly rich, productive, efficient, and privately-owned agricultural sector by demonizing farmers and ranchers, all as a means of prying control from independently productive family businesses.

These nefarious wolves dressed in white are no gentle lambs. They aim to chip away at our personal freedoms in tiny increments until the entire foundation of the Constitution crumbles. The slobbering wolves in white are gaining ground by pulling the wool over our collective eyes with lies. They are salivating to plunder the world’s breadbasket.

Make no mistake: they may blame cow farts, but when you have given them the ranchers, they shall dine on the same meat they have deemed illegal for you and me.

They buy us with empty promises to enact unconstitutional laws that entrap others into giving more and to tax the bad ones for the common good, ultimately entrapping all of us in that same net. As soon as we make more, we are taxed more for more social services that don’t ever solve the problems. Socialism is a crabs-in-a-barrel system where the political elites stand outside, watching some crabs pull the others down and the others give up at the bottom.

As a former refugee from communism, a New Yorker, and someone who is intensely appreciative of the producers who make our world possible—the farmers and ranchers—my aim is to use a small business to connect urbanites with the natural perfection of the raw resources normally out of reach to them. But the Green New Deal would tell them I’m evil and shouldn’t be given the same free access to the market to compete.

Back under the Ceausescu regime, my father was under surveillance by the secret police. He had dual citizenship and traveled freely, which merited him heavy government monitoring. Thanks to the mainstream emergence of extremist environmentalism, militant activists, doxxing, and extremist legislators, I can’t help feeling the pending threat of that hungry hound. Can my nice cow fat skin-creams make me a target here in the United States similar to what my dad endured in communist Romania?

COLUMN BY

Andra Constantin

Andra Constantin is the enamored owner of an opinionated 20 year old gelding, who has opened her eyes to the differences between animal welfare and the extremist ideology of animal rights.

RELATED ARTICLE: How communist Romania destroyed an entire generation of children

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Bernie Sanders: Killing a Terrorist Is Like Putting Muslims in Concentration Camps

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With Beto O’Rourke out of the race, it’s up to Bernie Sanders to come up with the best hot take on the killing of Soleimani. And he delivers exactly the sort of rambling senile socialist rant you would expect from Jeremy Corbyn. All he leaves out is throwing around “empire”, “endless war”, and “neo-liberalism”. And then blaming the whole thing on corporations. But at least he manages to compare Trump to Putin and Xi.

SANDERS: No, I think it was an assassination. I think it was in violation of international law. This guy was (INAUDIBLE) — was a bad news guy, but he was a ranking official of the Iranian government.

And Baghdadi was the ranking head of the Islamic State.

So what?

If a foreign government official decides to engage in terrorist operations, he’s a terrorist. The silly argument that Soleimani can’t be killed because he has an official title is nonsense. Terrorists don’t stop being terrorists because they have titles.

And you know what? Once you get into violating international law in that sense, you can say there are a lot of bad people all over the world running governments. Kim Jong-un in North Korea, not exactly a nice guy, responsible for the death, perhaps, of hundreds of thousands of people in his own country, to name one of many, you know?

Killing terrorists isn’t a violation of international law, but if it were, are all violations equivalent? Bernie’s argument is that if you shoplift, you might as well be a serial killer. It’s the sort of purity that lefties would vehemently reject when it comes to criminal justice, but not international law.

Funny.

The president of China now has put a million people in — Muslims, into educational camps. Some would call them concentration camps. But once you start this business of a major country saying, hey, we have the right to assassinate, then you’re unleashing international anarchy.

Some being Bernie. Anyway I thought he was a supporter of anarchists. And assassinations. The KGB did quite a bit of it.

I’m not a lawyer on these things, it might be. But this guy is, you know, was, as bad as he was, an official of the Iranian government.

And you unleash — then if China does that, you know, if Russia does that, you know, Russia has been implicated under Putin with assassinating dissidents.

I’m not a lawyer, I’m just a senator running for president and speaking on CNN.

Doesn’t Bernie have any lawyers working for his campaign? Or proxies? Or is it all Islamists who support Louie Farrakhan and killing Jews?

Anyway, according to a supporter of every Marxist terror group on the planet, killing an Islamist  terrorist is just like Putin killing dissidents. So Soleimani must be a dissident? Attacking a US embassy would be his form of dissent.

What would President Sanders do if a US embassy were attacked by Iran? Apologize. And blame some guy on YouTube for making a video.

COLUMN BY

DANIEL GREENFIELD

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Leftists Are Wrong: US Killing of Iran’s Suleimani a Legal Action

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren hosting call with pro-Tehran lobby group NIAC

Ilhan Omar On the Warmongering Trump and the Killing Of Qassem Soleimani

Rep. Ilhan Omar Casts Iranians, Iraqis as Victims of Trump

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Iran’s Islamic Republic – 40 Years of Terror and Crime

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Pelosi Is Realizing Impeachment Was a Mistake

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America is the midst of an imaginary impeachment standoff between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “Both have drawn firm lines in the sand. Someone’s got to give,” one reporter recently declared.

There is, of course, nothing to “give.” Pelosi has no standing to dictate the terms of a Senate trial; no constitutional right or political leverage. Why she has put herself in a position that will ultimately end, one way or another, with her surrendering to McConnell is perplexing.

A new piece in Time magazine does shed some light on the thought process behind Pelosi’s decision to refuse to hand over articles of impeachment to a Senate whose majority doesn’t want them.

One of the most interesting nuggets in the piece isn’t that Pelosi—portrayed as courageous risk-taker—had gotten the bright idea from CNN; it’s that she specifically got it from noted felon John Dean, Nixon’s former White House lawyer.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

Now, Dean is often portrayed as a patriotic, whistleblowing impeachment expert—which is true insofar as he planned the Watergate coverup, and then informed on everyone whom he conspired with after they were caught.

His real expertise is cashing in on criminality for the past 50 years.

Surely Pelosi, blessed with preternatural political instincts, wouldn’t rely on Dean’s advice? Surely Pelosi wasn’t browbeaten into doing this by podcast bros and talking heads on America’s least popular major cable news network?

Because whatever you make of the case against President Donald Trump, it’s getting increasingly difficult to argue that this amateurish, constantly shifting effort by the House has been effective.

After two dramatic emergency impeachment hearings, a pretend standoff, and massive cooperative coverage from the media, poll numbers haven’t budged. They may even have ticked back toward Trump.

Yet, to hear Time tell it, Pelosi has micromanaged every step of this process, from signing off on every committee report and press release— “aides say she caught typos in the Intelligence Committee’s final report before it went out”—to picking furniture that would make Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and the more diminutive Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., look like equals.

My working theory is this: Pelosi realized that impeachment was a mistake. She didn’t want the president to be able to tell voters that he had been exonerated by the Senate.

The only way to mitigate the damage was to undertake a ham-fisted effort to attack the Senate trial and dampen, or perhaps circumvent, that inevitable moment.

In the process, however, Pelosi destroyed the Democrats’ justification for rushing impeachment in the first place. Nadler and Schiff both argued that Trump’s tenure in office constituted a national emergency, and that the only way to save the republic from another stolen election was to move quickly.

McConnell, on the other hand, had to take only a short break from confirming judges to inform the House that the Senate would treat the impeachment of Donald Trump the same way it treated the impeachment of Bill Clinton—with a rules package that passed 100-0 in 1998.

Under the Clinton precedent, the Senate would allow both the House impeachment managers and Trump’s lawyers to make their case, with questions from the Senate to follow.

Pelosi’s defenders are running out of arguments. Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin now says that acting on the Clinton precedent means that moderate Republican senators such as Susan Collins of Maine “will face the real possibility that conclusive evidence of Trump’s wrongdoing will come to light after a sham trial. That would make for a disastrous, humiliating legacy.”

The gaping hole in this argument, and the reason Democrats are losing the debate, is that they’ve already claimed to have conclusive evidence of Trump’s wrongdoing. They claimed they had proof of bribery, but they didn’t include it in the impeachment articles. They claimed to have proof in the Mueller report that Trump obstructed justice, yet it’s not in the articles of impeachments either.

Rubin herself has alleged, dozens of times, that we already have definitive proof Trump has committed an impeachable offense.

In truth, if the House had made a persuasive case, there would be public pressure on Republicans to act in a different manner. That the House did not is the only reason Pelosi embraced Dean’s silly idea—which has drastically backfired.

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COMMENTARY BY

David Harsanyi

David Harsanyi is a senior writer at National Review and the author of “First Freedom: A Ride through America’s Enduring History With the Gun, From the Revolution to Today.” Twitter: .

RELATED ARTICLE: Trump: Impeachment ‘Should Not Even Be Allowed to Proceed’

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Antifa Violence Talk Cancelled Due to . . . Threat of Antifa Violence

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The University of British Columbia cancelled a talk on Antifa violence by conservative journalist Andy Ngo due to the (wait for it) threat of Antifa violence.

The event, planned for January 29 and sponsored by the Free Speech Club, was originally given the go-ahead, but the university reversed its decision on December 20, citing safety and security concerns.

Antifa is a violent, Far Left protest group. Their activists are aptly described by The Epoch Times, which reported that the university is now being threatened with legal action due to the cancellation:

“Antifa activists are self-described communist anarchists who have used vandalism, physical violence, threats, and even blockades to shut down events or protest opinions they oppose. They typically dress in black, sometimes carry clubs, and wear masks to hide their faces.”

Ngo is no stranger to Antifa violence, having been the brunt of a number of brutal attacks by the group’s “activists,” one of which landed him in the hospital with a brain bleed.

Last weekend in Seattle, Antifa activists assaulted conservative reporter Elijah Schaffer, a BlazeTV contributor and host of the show “Slightly Offens*ve,” when Schaffer tried to prevent an Antifa protester from grabbing a camera from one of his producers.

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) demanded a reinstatement of the event in a letter to UBC president Santa Ono.

“It is an alarming betrayal of the foundational pillar of higher education—the freedom of thought, belief, opinion, and expression. Furthermore, it signals automatic acquiescence to the ‘heckler’s veto,’ which will embolden threats from those who oppose the very notion of free expression,” said Marty Moore, a JCCF lawyer.

Moore also said that cancelling the event a month in advance was unreasonable, considering the fact that “UBC could have taken numerous steps to address any safety concerns, including letting the police deal with anyone making specific threats.”

Ngo acknowledged that UBC’s concerns about Antifa violence were real, but disagreed with their response and the message it sends.

“Violence from left-wing ideologues on campuses is routine,” Ngo said. “The only thing to do is to be brave. The authoritarian Far Left seek power through intimidation, harassment, and violence, if need be. We can’t give them that.”

RELATED STORIES:

Police Stand By While Conservative Reporter Assaulted by Antifa

Conservative Journalist Andy Ngo Suffers Brain Bleed After Attack

Antifa Blocks, Berates Elderly Woman Using Walker

Midwest Grocery Chain Supports Good Values and Great Customer Service

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A false narrative among the Left is that you cannot provide great customer service without being “woke” enough. Chick-fil-A discovered this when its recent abandonment of socially conservative charity groups was greeted with dismissal by the radical LGBT group GLAAD. Apparently, in the eyes of the woke Left, being America’s most polite fast-food chain, providing quality food, and putting customers first isn’t good enough if you’re not exactly the right kind of great food provider.

So, Chick-fil-A bailed. But not everyone else has. The Midwest grocery chain Schnucks (4) is expanding its customer service while still supporting the values of The Salvation Army.

Unlike Chick-fil-A, grocery chain Schnucks isn’t abandoning The Salvation Army or its customers. The company has announced the continuation of its charitable partnership with The Salvation Army through a “round-up” donation system where consumers can round purchases to the nearest dollar. Schnucks donated 100 percent of the rounded dollars – over $200,000 in 2018 – to The Salvation Army.

Schnucks’ dedication to charity hasn’t left customers behind. The company is expanding curbside pickup services to 59 stores through a partnership with Instacart. Now customers will be able to shop faster than ever – and they won’t have to worry about the company abandoning their values as Chick-fil-A did.

Schnucks has proven, charity and customer quality can and should go hand-in-hand. Chick-fil-A used to know that – so let’s make sure Schnucks never forgets. Buy from Schnucks to thank them for showing corporate America how to balance profits and principals.

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EDITORS NOTE: This 2nd Vote column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Democratic Socialists Denounce Trump for Killing Iranian Terrorist

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“We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war.”  – President Donald Trump

“To defeat Islamic extremist terrorism, we must put them on defense. If they are at war against us – which they have declared – we must commit ourselves to unconditional victory against them.” – Rudy Giuliani

“Fighting terrorism is not unlike fighting a deadly cancer. It can’t be treated just where it’s visible – every diseased cell in the body must be destroyed.”  – David Hackworth, former U.S. Army Colonel and military journalist.

“Islam is a political ideology…it definitely hides behind this notion of it being a religion, It’s like cancer…a malignant cancer in this case.”  – Lt. General Michael T. Flynn (RTD)

Where does one even begin to expose the nest of vipers who are out to destroy America’s freedoms, liberties and sovereignty, and to make themselves rich while doing it. I’m not just talking about Islamic terrorism, but about the socialists in our Congress.

The Democratic Socialists and neo-con Trotskyite Republicans (they are Marxists as well) hate President Trump for disrupting their goal of the globalization of America, and the neutralization of her world leadership.  They’d rather have Communist Red China as the world leader and Iranian terrorism (funded by our government via Obama’s gift of billions of taxpayer dollars) than have a president who directs military force at the very head of the Islamic terrorist snake.  That same snake calls America the “Great Satan,” when in fact, they are the barbaric savages who represent the demons of hell.

While Iraqis, American and Iranian-Canadians dance in the street over Soleimani’s death, the Democratic Socialists condemn the fact that Trump and Pompeo protected our embassy and our people, unlike Obama and Hillary in Benghazi.  And Soleimani helped plan the attack on U.S. government facilities in Benghazi.  The U.S. strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces.  It was a laser-guided hellfire missile traveling 240 mph that took them out.

The Socialist Democrats, the mainstream media and the neo-cons in the Republican Party deceive Americans with their tongues and pens because they hate the man who has disrupted their globalist plans to ravage this country.  What they fail to understand is that when you wage war on Trump or the American people, Trump is going to wage war back.

Many politicians, both past and present have worked to lay waste to the founding precepts of this nation by those who fought to gain our freedoms.

Political Reactions to Soleimani’s Death

Despite Soleimani’s murder and torture of adults and children, he was lauded by our mainstream media as being “a brilliant military leader.” Fox News contributor Tammy Bruce commented, “Their instinct, like with al-Baghdadi’s death, is to try to cast these individuals as though they were like nice guys or maybe didn’t deserve this.”

Today’s Democratic Party and their cohorts in the media obviously don’t believe in the use of force against America’s enemies; just look at their penchant for open borders.  Their actions lead me and others to believe that the Socialist Democrats cannot be trusted to keep Americans safe.

Rand Paul says Trump should have gotten congressional approval and he disapproves of the GOP praise of terrorist Soleimani’s death.  Really Rand?  Did Obama get permission from Congress to take out bin Laden?  I believe he was lauded for doing so.  And another thing Rand, going to congress would have ended up warning this bloodthirsty terrorist that our military had him targeted.

And yes, there are leaks!

The Gateway Pundit reported that the Deep State is once again trying to damage President Trump with selective leaks to the left-wing media.  “Two ‘sources’ who had intelligence briefings (Obama holdovers) about the strike that killed Iranian military officials leaked portions of the briefings to the New York Times in order to push the narrative that President Trump authorized a drone strike that killed top Iran commander Soleimani with ‘razor thin’ evidence that an attack on American targets was imminent.”

Soleimani authorized and planned the attack on our Iraqi embassy, he was involved in Benghazi, he killed 700 American soldiers, and he murdered a thousand of his own Persians who were peacefully marching in Iran.  Escalating American attacks were planned.

In his testimony last July, U.S. Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford – now chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – attributed responsibility for over 500 U.S. military deaths to the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps–Quds Force and its commander, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani. These deaths accounted for 14 percent of U.S. combat fatalities in Iraq.

“That blood is on Iran’s hands.”

Ilhan Omar (D-MN) Somali immigrant, suggested that Trump secretly carried out the strike to provide a “distraction” from the upcoming Senate impeachment trial.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took a stand for brutal terrorist and Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, scolding President Donald Trump for taking a “disproportionate and provocative” hit on the terrorist.

Speaker Pelosi announced overnight that she plans on taking measures to potentially curb President Trump’s ability to conduct military operations against Iran.  Of course it never bothered her that Obama’s covert drone war comprising 536 strikes against Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen killed between 384 and 807 civilians.

Willard Mitt Romney surprisingly tweeted, “(Soleimani) had the blood of hundreds of American servicemen and women on his hands, and … was doubtlessly planning operations to further harm our citizens and allies. With ever-increasing challenges confronting us in the Middle East, it’s imperative that the U.S. and our allies articulate and pursue a coherent strategy for protecting our security interests in the region.”

Jeh Johnson, Obama’s former Homeland Security Secretary, was interviewed by Chuck Todd on Meet the Press and what he said has been ignored by the rest of the mainstream media.  Johnson said, “If you believe everything that our government is saying about General Soleimani, he was a lawful military objective, and the president, under his constitutional authority as commander in chief, had ample domestic legal authority to take him out without an additional congressional authorization. Whether he was a terrorist or a general in a military force that was engaged in armed attacks against our people, he was a lawful military objective.”  Link

Ahh yes, there’s a new sheriff in town, one who protects his people.

Joe Lieberman, former Senator (D-CT) wrote in Monday’s WSJ, “President Trump’s order to take out Soleimani was morally, constitutionally, and strategically correct.  It deserves more bipartisan support than the begrudging or negative reactions it has received thus far from my fellow Democrats.”

He even asked his fellow Democrats, ““What the hell are you doing? You’re siding with enemies of this country.”

Alan M. Dershowitz, (Democrat) wrote in Monday’s WSJ, “It was an easy call, the strike on Soleimani was lawful.  While reasonable people can debate the wisdom of killing Iranian Maj. Gen. Soleimani, there is little doubt that President Trump acted lawfully, under both domestic and international law in ordering his death.  The president has the constitutional authority to take military actions, short of declaring war, that he and his advisors deem necessary to protect American citizens.  This authority is extremely broad, especially when the actions must, by their nature, be kept secret from the intended target.”

David Petraeus, Obama’s former CIA Director and retired General was interviewed on Face the Nation. He said, “It’s impossible to overstate the significance of the attack that takes out Qasem Soleimani, and the number two militia leader in Iraq as well, who also never dared to set foot in Iraq during the surge after we missed him and he escaped. So, this is bigger than bin Laden. It’s bigger than Baghdadi.”

Reagan and Obama

Ruth King’s blog, Ruthfully Yours, reminds us…

What was the response of President Ronald Reagan to the terrorist bombing of the United States Marine barracks in 1983?

On October 23, 1983  a suicide bomber detonated a truck bomb at a building serving as barracks for the 1st Battalion 8th Marines (Battalion Landing Team – BLT 1/8) of the 2nd Marine Division, killing 220 Marines, 18 sailors and 3 soldiers, making this incident the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States in peacetime. It was no secret that the attack had been carried out by Hezbollah.

Furthermore, the evacuation of the wounded was poorly organized and executed. Trauma centers in Israel, arguably the best in the world and in Cyprus were minutes away by helicopter, but instead transports took them to Europe base hospitals several hours away. A Pentagon commission many years later was critical of those decisions.

Three-and-a-half months after the bombing and after repeatedly pledging not to do so, President Reagan ordered the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Lebanon. Reagan never retaliated against Hezbollah or their Iranian and Syrian sponsors responsible for the bombings, a position widely endorsed by senior military officials. That’s called cut and run.

President Donald Trump did not do that.

President Obama actually foiled the plan of Israel to assassinate Soleimani in 2015.  Tyler O’Neill of PJ Media writes,

When President Donald Trump gave the order to kill Iran’s Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani, he not only made an arguably proportionate response to the invasion of the U.S. Embassy this week but he also reversed a policy of the Obama administration. According to a report from 2018, Israel was “on the verge” of assassinating Soleimani in 2015, but Obama’s officials foiled the plan. In fact, they reached out to Iran with news of Israel’s plans.

The Trump administration, on the other hand, gave Israel a green light to assassinate Soleimani, according to a January 1, 2018 report from the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida. The paper quoted a source in Jerusalem as saying that “there is an American-Israeli agreement” that Soleimani is a “threat to the two countries’ interests in the region.”

Iran’s Threats

Endless provocations and law breaking by the Iranian’s with dozens of recent attacks on Americans was the final straw for our President.  When Iran threatened to attack the White House after America silenced their terrorist leader, the President told them that he has a list of 52 targets in Iran should the Islamic Republic attempt to take revenge on the U.S. for its elimination of Qasem Soleimani.  President Trump did not identify the targets but added that they would be “HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD.”

Iran has promised revenge for the death of their terrorist leader.

On January 5, 2020, the Iranian Regime offered an $80 million bounty for anyone who brings in the head of President Donald Trump for killing Qasem Soleimani.

In early 2016, Barack Hussein Obama sent them pallets of cash in unmarked cargo planes totaling $400 million. Tehran then released four Americans who were being held. (payoff) Obama then sent an additional $1.3 billion as payment on “estimated interest” of Iranian cash the U.S. had allegedly been holding since the 70s.  American taxpayer dollars given to Iran by Obama can be used for the bounty on President Trump’s head.

Conclusion

The Democrats, including the 2020 presidential candidates, are now all fearful of retaliation by Iran, claiming Trump has thrown a stick of dynamite into a powder keg. Several of our allies are reacting in the same manner…Germany, England, and France, are showing weakness rather than strength. Little tiny Israel is standing firm with our President.

Our military, at the direction of our Commander in Chief, parted the head of the snake from its terrorist body.  Donald Trump and our military have made the world a safer place. Yet, the Democratic Party refuses to give him kudos; instead, they manufacture fear for the nation claiming the fallout from Soleimani’s death will endanger our nation.

As long as President Trump is in our White House, I’m not worried about Iran.

P.S.  Another year has passed, and donations have helped to keep NewsWithViews up and running.  We thank you and we appreciate everyone’s efforts to keep this amazing site alive and well.  Please consider making monthly donations in any size so that news you’ll never hear from mainstream media will come into your inbox every morning.  You can make donations here, and please, tell your friends to sign up on the home page of NWVs to receive some of the most important news you’ll find anywhere.

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Must-watch video: Turns out impeachment wasn’t so ‘urgent’

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Where’d the “urgency” go?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Democrats spent months lecturing Americans to take impeachment seriously. They claimed it was a matter of national security—so important, in fact, that it excused rushing a sham “investigation” through the House of Representatives.

It was the fastest impeachment in American history. And now. . . silence.

After months of saying there was no time to waste, Speaker Pelosi pumped the brakes. Rather than delivering the articles of impeachment to the Senate for trial, she’s holding onto them, refusing to name the “managers” whose job will be to make the House Democrats’ case to the Senate.

“I’ll send them over when I’m ready,” Pelosi said today.

This stunt horribly undercuts the Democrats’ case in two big ways. First, it makes a mockery of the Constitution, which unambiguously grants the Senate the “sole power to try all impeachments.” That means Senate leaders are responsible for outlining the process they’ll follow. House leaders got to use their own rules for the impeachment inquiry and vote—they don’t get to decide how the Senate does its job, too.

Second, Pelosi’s stalling confirms the doubts of both House Republicans and Democrats who voted against impeachment: There was no evidence to move forward. Not only did Democrat leaders fail to show that President Donald J. Trump broke the law; their articles of impeachment don’t even allege that he committed a crime. For the first time in history, a President has been impeached for solely political reasons.

Even Senate Democrats are finding it hard to excuse this behavior, and a growing number of them are calling on Speaker Pelosi to end the stalling. It’s easy to see why: If even Democrats can’t take their own impeachment seriously, why should anybody else?

“Send them over”: Dianne Feinstein tells Pelosi to end the delay

Inside look: “Washington tries, and fails, to defend Nancy Pelosi’s failed impeachment strategy”

America is a nation of builders. Bureaucrats shouldn’t hold us back.

Better infrastructure in every community is key to America’s future. The list includes improved roads, bridges, airports, and other major projects that currently have to go through a maze of byzantine regulations to get over the finish line.

President Trump: My Administration is fixing this regulatory nightmare.

Today, President Trump proposed a new rule under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to ensure our infrastructure can be built in a timely, affordable manner.

“From day one, my Administration has made fixing this regulatory nightmare a top priority,” the President said. “We want to build new roads, bridges, tunnels, highways—bigger, better, faster, and we want to build them at less cost.”

The outdated regulations guiding NEPA haven’t seen a major update of this nature in more than 40 years. President Trump’s proposed rule would establish time limits of 2 years for the completion of environmental impact statements. The average time it takes right now to complete these reviews is nearly 5 years. It can drag on more than 7 years for highways.

President Trump: We’re trimming this daunting permitting process

MORE: “A needed update to the nation’s environmental rules”

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews likens jihad terror mastermind Soleimani to Princess Diana and Elvis Presley [Video]

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Matthews is of course correct, except for the minor detail that when Soleimani covered “Don’t Be Cruel,” he sang “Be Cruel.”

These people’s intense hatred of President Trump has driven them mad.

“Chris Matthews Compares Soleimani to Elvis Presley and Princess Diana,” by Andrew Kugle, Washington Free Beacon, January 8, 2020 (thanks to the Geller Report):

MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews on Wednesday night compared deceased Iranian terror master Qassem Soleimani to Elvis Presley and Princess Diana.

“When some people die, you don’t know what the impact is going to be. When Princess Diana died, for example, there was a huge emotional outpouring,” Matthews said. “Elvis Presley in our culture—it turns out that this general we killed was a beloved hero of the Iranian people to the point where—look at the people, we got pictures up now—these enormous crowds coming out. There’s no American emotion in this case, but there’s a hell of a lot of emotion on the other side.”

Soleimani led the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps which trained, funded, and armed Iran-sympathetic terrorist groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and around the Middle East, killing thousands, including hundreds of Americans.

“Should our leaders know what they’re doing when they kill somebody?” Matthews asked Rep. Joaquin Castro (D., Texas).

Castro replied that Trump’s strategy of pulling out of the nuclear deal and putting pressure on Iran has failed.

“They very much could have anticipated that Iranians would react in this way, both the Iranian public but also that the government would strike back,” Castro said. “This speaks to a much larger issue, Chris, which is the president has had a very chaotic and erratic foreign policy, especially with respect to Iran.”…

RELATED ARTICLES:

Sadiq Khan’s London: Islamic Student Association brands US ‘Terrorist State’ at embassy protests

Hamas-linked CAIR claims “discrimination” over Iranian-Canadian complaints about being detained at US border

Soleimani’s Death a Body Blow to the Islamic Republic

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column with video is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

House Democrats Pass War Powers Resolution Criticizing Trump’s Killing of Suleimani

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The Democrat-controlled House approved a resolution late Thursday aimed at reining in President Donald Trump’s future actions on Iran and condemning him for not notifying Congress before last week’s drone strike that killed an Iranian terrorist leader, who was one of the country’s most senior officials.

The resolution passed 224 to 194, with three Republicans joining the Democratic majority in supporting it and eight Democrats opposed. Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, a Republican-turned-independent, voted for the symbolic resolution.

“Last week, the Trump administration conducted a provocative and disproportionate military airstrike targeting high-level Iranian military officials, and he did so without consulting Congress,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said on the House floor.

Trump ordered a drone strike that killed Gen. Qassim Suleimani, head of the Quds Force, the terrorist arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, on Jan. 3. Suleimani commanded numerous terrorist attacks, which killed about 600 Americans, according to the State Department.

The demand for socialism is on the rise from young Americans today. But is socialism even morally sound? Find out more now >>

“When I first heard from the administration, the secretary of defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs, I said, ‘Why did you not consult Congress?’” Pelosi said. “They said, ‘Because we had to keep this close.’ You had to keep it close from the ‘Gang of Eight,’ the leadership of Congress?”

The “Gang of Eight” comprises the House speaker and House minority leader, Senate majority and minority leaders, and the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence committees.

The House on Thursday passed the measure as a concurrent resolution, which means it’s nonbinding and would not be forwarded to the Senate or president—who would be unlikely to sign it anyway—and would not carry the force of law. Rather, it’s a statement by the House against the administration’s action.

“We know full well, better than many in the administration, the importance of classified information,” Pelosi said. “So, who were they keeping it close from? They admitted they were keeping it close from the Congress of the United States.”

The nonbinding resolution was sponsored by freshman Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., who has a background with the CIA and the Defense Department.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., has introduced companion legislation in the Senate. The Senate is controlled by Republicans, where it is unlikely to get a vote.

The War Powers Act is a 1973 law that obligates the president to provide notification to Congress about a military action within 48 hours and gives Congress limited ability to prohibit further action.

During the House floor debate, Trump retweeted former national security adviser John Bolton’s criticism of the War Powers Act, saying he agreed that the law was unconstitutional and should be repealed.

Earlier Thursday, in remarks at the White House, Trump defended the decision to kill Suleimani.

Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., noted that the administration took action to kill a dangerous terrorist and criticized the Democrats who are attacking him for it.

“I never thought that I would hear, on this House floor, an apology to the Iranian people for an action that we took that was justified, taking out a terrorist,” he said.

The North Carolina lawmaker noted the carnage caused by the Iranian general killed in the strike.

We have a gentleman who gave his legs in service to this country, and yet we are apologizing to the Iranians with a nonbinding resolution that is nothing more than a press release.

It has no effect. It doesn’t do anything. … All they are doing is trying to get a press release to keep them from having a primary opponent.

This is a sad, sad day. Yet here we are, having another speech to try to take on the president of the United States for actually taking out a terrorist.

I would ask my colleagues the opposite. How many Americans does a terrorist have to kill before they join with us? Is 600 not enough? Does it have to be 1,000, or 10,000? A million?

At some point, we have to stand up and let the long arm of justice go in and take out these terrorists.

In retaliation for the strike that killed Suleimani, Iran launched missiles at two U.S. military bases in Iraq on Tuesday, but there were no casualties. Trump announced on Wednesday he would be pushing more sanctions on Iran in response to the attack.

COLUMN BY

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Lucas is also the author of “Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections.” Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

RELATED ARTICLE: No, Sen. Mike Lee Isn’t Breaking With the President on Iran. But He Has a Point.

A Note for our Readers:

With the demand for socialism at an all-time high among our young people—our future leaders and decisionmakers—the experts at Heritage stopped and asked a question that not many have asked:

Is socialism really morally sound?

The researchers at The Heritage Foundation have put together a guide to help you and our fellow Americans better understand the 9 Ways That Socialism Will Morally Bankrupt America.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET YOUR FREE COPY NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

The troubling terminations you’ve never heard of. Not all abortions end an unwanted pregnancy, and that makes a difference to the women

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Does the termination of an unwanted pregnancy harm women’s mental health? No more than giving birth in such circumstances, according to mainstream social scientists and medical associations. Perhaps. But what about women who terminate a wanted pregnancy?

A new study by sociologist Donald Paul Sullins focuses on this neglected minority – about 1 in 7 of reported abortions in the United States – and finds there is no room for complacency about the effects of abortion among them. In the following interview he talks to MercatorNet about this study, the first of its kind, published in November in the Swiss medical journal Medicina.

Golden Globes award winner Michelle Williams more or less shouted her abortion as a good career move that she does not regret. She has a daughter of 14 and is happily pregnant again at age 39. Isn’t Williams living proof of the therapeutic value of abortion?

Ms. Williams’ declaration is very consistent with the results of my study.  The child she aborted clearly was not a wanted pregnancy, and the study found that women who only aborted one or more unwanted pregnancies experienced much lower affective distress (depression, anxiety, suicidality). This is why ignoring wanted pregnancy abortions, acting as if only unwanted pregnancies were ever aborted, tends to understate how much hurt is out there for women after abortion.

There is no question that the chances for advancement in a highly demanding, competitive career often improve by removing inconvenient persons and commitments, whether through divorce, not crediting someone else’s work, character assassination, or– in Michelle Williams’ case — killing an inconveniently conceived child before birth.  Civilized people generally do not boast about exercising such brutal career realpolitik, but Ms. Williams probably (let us hope for her sake) does not comprehend the humanity of the unborn life she took.

She has no way of knowing what the acceptance and love of that terminated life, a close reflection of her own being, may have contributed to her own growth in dignity and humanity.  For all she knows, her career may have been improved, or maybe her career would have suffered but her life and happiness improved. We have no way of knowing what pain and struggle may lie (lay?) behind her defiant public mask.  Why did she feel the need, after announcing her abortion, to reassure her living child of her love for her?  Did she sense that her daughter (and we) may wonder?

In the #MeToo era, it is also appropriate to ask who was the father of the child she felt she needed to abort. Would presenting this man with a child after having sexual relations with him have impeded her career?  Male sexual exploitation does not end just with hurt feelings or degradation for the woman. Perhaps this was not the case for Ms. Williams, but for every actress who found a pregnancy inconvenient to her career there are probably several men in the film industry who have urged or insisted that she obtain an abortion.

The career obstacle for both men and women of having a child at the wrong time is a mirror image of the career and personal obstructions met by women who refuse to have sex with the right men.  Whatever her personal circumstances, Ms. Williams’ statement reflects the typical Hollywood product, in which women’s sexuality exists primarily to service male desire, and women consequently have little agency. As one Hollywood actress (don’t remember who) said of her new boyfriend, voicing a common feeling of young women today, ” I have to give him what he wants, or he will get it somewhere else.”

Even if some women experience mental health problems after an abortion, research seems to show that these are no greater on the whole than those of women who give birth, and that they soon pass away. Have researchers been missing something?

Yes.  Both the idea that mental health problems are not increased by abortion and that they are not reduced by childbearing are myths perpetrated by poor research, in this case studies that follow women for only a very short time, some only a few days and often only a few months. So far, every study that has followed women 10 years or longer post-abortion have reported significant mental health problems, compared to women who give birth.

It is important to note that most of this difference is not due to psychological deficits from an abortion but to psychological benefits from having a child.  In the Add Health data I studied, childbirth reduced mental health risk by 29% following wanted pregnancies and by 12% even with unwanted pregnancies.

The reasons for this defect in the research, I believe, is that most abortion researchers tend to think of an abortion as a detached clinical event, and do not take into account the way that having an abortion, including making the choice and defending it, alters the life course, relationships and outlook of the woman involved.  As I put it in the paper:

“The experience of deciding upon, experiencing, and recovering from the termination of a pregnancy brings many life factors to bear for women, all of which may influence subsequent mental health. For these reasons, it may be more accurate to conceive of an abortion, not as a discrete cause of mental health outcomes (a clinical event), but as one factor in a complex of influences (a life event) that together affect a woman’s level of psychological well-being or distress.”

It seems amazing that yours is the “first study ever” of wanted pregnancy abortions. Surely there is plenty of evidence of them, especially with the increase in terminations for fetal abnormality, and all we hear about #MeToo and domestic violence?

The most influential researchers have simply assumed that only unwanted pregnancies are aborted. Many studies simply define aborted pregnancies as unwanted, even when not preceded by contraception. In 2008 the American Psychological Association (APA) dismissed all wanted pregnancy abortions as due only to fetal abnormality, but (as I show in the study) such abnormalities, even if we could detect them perfectly (we detect only about 60%) and even if all of them were aborted (many are not), could account for only a small proportion of reported wanted pregnancy abortions.  When not forced to check a box on a survey, very few women spontaneously describe their aborted child as “unwanted”. There is almost always a level of ambivalence, regret and resignation, that is expressed in complex feelings about the abortion.

It is difficult for OB/GYNs in other countries to understand the sales-like pressure to have an abortion faced by women in American abortion clinics. The movie “Unplanned” does a good job of illustrating this. The abortion rate in the United States has been much higher than in countries where abortions are performed in public hospitals with no profit incentive. A recent study of Utah clinics found that just a three-day waiting period resulted in 8% of women reversing their initial decision to have an abortion.

There have been one or two studies of fetal abnormality abortions, and studies that have looked at all abortions regardless of pregnancy intention have thereby included wanted pregnancy abortions mixed in with all the others, but mine is the first study of all wanted pregnancy abortions as a distinct category.

In your study, what data and measures did you use and what did they reveal about wanted pregnancy abortions? How serious were the effects compared to giving birth or unwanted pregnancy abortions?

The study examined the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), which followed a representative cohort of 3,935 ever-pregnant U.S. women from age 15 to age 28, gathering data from three successive interviews. I looked at seven psychological disorders which Add Health measured using criteria from the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM): depression, suicide ideation, anxiety, and abuse of or addiction to hard drugs, alcohol, opioids or marijuana.  Mental health was compared both before and after pregnancy, abortion and birth, and was adjusted for 20 covariates that, my previous research had suggested, account for higher mental health problems, apart from an abortion.  These were 1 = childhood physical abuse, 2 = childhood sexual abuse, 3 = childhood verbal abuse, 4 = depression, 5 = anxiety, 6 = suicidal ideation, 7 = alcohol abuse, 8 = drug abuse, 9 = nicotine dependence, 10 = cannabis abuse, 11 = conduct problems in school, 12 = neuroticism, 13 = neighborhood integration, 14 = grade point average (gpa), 15 = ever raped, 16 = relationship satisfaction, 17 = educational attainment, 18 = respondent poverty income, 19 = marital status, and 20 = intimate partner violence.

I found that by age 28, U.S. women who had ever had an abortion of a wanted pregnancy were 84% more likely to experience higher numbers of the seven psychological disorders than were women who had carried all wanted pregnancies to term.  Women who had ever aborted any pregnancy were 74% more likely to experience higher psychological disorders compared to those who had given birth.

Experiencing wanted pregnancy abortion led to higher affective distress (depression, anxiety and suicidality) than abortions of unwanted pregnancies, relative to the corresponding births.  Risk of these psychological difficulties was only 18% higher following abortion of only unwanted pregnancies, but 69% higher following abortion of one or more wanted pregnancies.

What is the significance of your finding about substance abuse?

I was surprised to find that whether an aborted pregnancy had been wanted or unwanted had no effect on post-abortion rates of substance abuse.  Overall, risk of substance abuse (of alcohol, opioids, marijuana, or illegal drugs) was twice as high (elevated 100%) for women following any abortion, but was unaffected by pregnancy intention.  Only a few studies have examined the association of abortion and substance abuse; more study is needed to understand what is going on in this area.

My hunch is that pregnancies that may be subject to abortion and substance abuse reflect risk-taking, self-destructive behavior, and their co-occurrence reflects a system of mutually reinforcing moral hazard.  I hope to explore this idea in a future study.

What is it about the design of your study that gives you confidence in its findings?

By comparison to cross-sectional studies that only take a snapshot of women at a single point in time, my study is more like a series of pictures that can show changes over time. The exact same women were interviewed at three points in time to determine the effect of their prior pregnancy history on their current mental health. Only a handful of abortion studies have used such rigorous longitudinal designs.

In addition, the Add Health data, funded by a consortium of U.S. federal agencies, are widely acknowledged to be among the most comprehensive and accurate in the world. Response rates and follow-up rates are high (over 80%) and the measures are well-designed and independently validated.

Having said that, it is important to acknowledge that no empirical study can offer definitive proof, and this one is subject to several limitations. Most importantly, every study of abortion using population data is limited by the fact that many abortions are not reported, so we can only talk about the abortions we know of. Since a woman who is more troubled by her abortion is less likely to report it, I think my study probably understates the true level of post-abortion distress for U.S. women. Other limitations are discussed in the study.

No doubt the fact that you are a Catholic priest working in a Catholic university will provoke some prejudice against your research, so it is interesting that studies by secular researchers  in Scandinavia and by David Fergusson in New Zealand support your findings. What do their studies show?

Pedersen (studying women in Sweden) and Fergusson found similar problems for women following abortions because they used a similar longitudinal design that followed women for a decade or more after their abortion. Fergusson found that ever-aborting women had 1.4 times higher overall risk (not relative to births) of mental health problems; my study found 1.2 times higher risk.

The similarity has nothing to do with their personal religious or moral convictions about abortion as public policy.  Several recent studies from Finland, by scholars who reflect that culture’s uncontroversial acceptance of abortion as reproductive health care, have found similar persistent problems for post-abortion women, such as a doubled risk of suicide, 25% higher overall mortality, and higher emotional distress among women who wanted to give birth.  This doesn’t reflect an anti-abortion bias, but just the fact that Finland has excellent health registry population data and is able to follow women’s health for a long time to see the outcomes.

Accusing me of anti-abortion bias because I am Catholic reflects a shallow ignorance of the Catholic enterprise.  Many scientists today do not even believe in objective truth, and so cannot imagine someone who does not approach scientific topics with anything more than a narrow ideology to propagate.  It is very true that my faith strongly affects my research, but not in the manner critics think.  The principles of the Catholic faith, out of which modern science developed, call for faithful scientists to be rigorously objective in their research.  Only by looking as hard as I can to find empirical evidence that contradicts the claims of my faith can I then have confidence that any resulting findings which may be consistent with faith-claims have any validity. This process — the logic of the null hypothesis — is not external to the scientific method, but is central to what every scientist should be doing.

There is a great deal of bias in abortion research, but it’s not from the religiously oriented scholars for the most part. The main difference between myself and most scholars who research U.S. abortions is that I am not employed or funded by an abortion provider.  Over 90% of U.S. abortion studies have as one or more co-authors a researcher who works for an abortion provider or a research center funded by an abortion provider. Their assertively benign findings about the experience and effects of abortion are highly self-serving and rarely withstand careful scrutiny.

What, so far, has been the response to your latest study from other researchers?

It is too soon to tell much.  Friendly researchers I know (most, but not all, opposed to abortion) have written words of appreciation and praise, and invited a couple of lectures to explain the findings further.  Pro-life attorneys have been ecstatic. With the study I published a “crosswalk” that addresses some critical responses to a similar earlier study from pro-abortion researchers. I will be interested to see what their eventual responses will be to the measures I took in this study to address those concerns.

COLUMN BY

Rev. Donald Paul Sullins, MDiv., PhD, is a Research Associate Professor of Sociology at The Catholic University of America and Senior Research Associate at The Ruth Institute. He is also Director of the Leo Institute for Catholic Social Research.

Reference: Sullins DP. Affective and Substance Abuse Disorders Following Abortion by Pregnancy Intention in the United States: A Longitudinal Cohort Study. Medicina. 2019 Nov;55(11):741. Available at: https://www.mdpi.com/1010-660X/55/11/741  The article can be freely accessed and reproduced.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Planned Parenthood Sets New Record for Abortions in a Single Year

Why we should respect doctors’ conscientious objections

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

NY Times Embarrasses Itself Again – On Iran-9/11 Ties. No wonder the president calls them ‘fake news.’

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The sloppy New York Times is once-again embarrassing itself. In a prominent “fact-check” piece appearing on Friday, cub reporter Zach Montague ripped into Vice President Mike Pence for a series of tweets that described the terror-drenched record of the ex-Quds Force commander, Qassem Suleymani.

At issue was Pence’s account of Suleymani’s links to the September 11, 2001 attacks on America. In one tweet, the vice president noted that Suleymani and his terrorists “assisted in the clandestine travel to Afghanistan of 10 of the 12 terrorists who carried out the September 11 terrorist attacks in the Untied States.

Assisted in the clandestine travel to Afghanistan of 10 of the 12 terrorists who carried out the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

— Mike Pence (@Mike_Pence) January 3, 2020

This prompted the NY Times to snipe, “How Mr. Pence arrived at this number and this account is unclear” since there was nothing in “public United States intelligence” [sic] linking the two, or indeed, anyone in Iran to the 9/11 attacks.

Montague could have consulted former NY Times Philip Shenon, whose 2008 book about the 9/11 Commission reprised a story I revealed several years earlier about the discovery by Commission staff of some 75 highly classified NSA intercepts that spelled out in great detail the help Iran offered al Qaeda in furtherance of the 9/11 plot.

If he had just Googled, “Iran 9/11 ties,” he would have discovered a July 18, 2004 article by Shenon stating that the final report of the 9/11 Commission would include “information drawn from intelligence reports about Iran’s ties to the al Qaeda hijackers.”

He also would have found another New York Times article, this one dated May 20, 2011, about significant new evidence presented to a federal district court in Manhattan by attorneys on behalf of 9/11 victims about Iran’s direct, material assistance to the al Qaeda hijackers and the 9/11 plot.

While still on Google, he would have found additional articles on Iran’s ties to 9/11 in such pro-Trump publications as Time magazine. And others here, here and here.

(Disclosure: I provided expert testimony in the Iran 9/11 case based on debriefings I conducted with defectors from Iranian intelligence who had personal knowledge of Iran’s ties to al Qaeda and specifically to the 9/11 conspiracy; I also provided historical testimony on Iran’s ties to Sunni terrorist groups.)

Ace reporter Montague could have consulted the 9/11 Commission Report itself. On p. 240 he would have read, “we now have evidence suggesting that 8 to 10 of the 14 Saudi “muscle” operatives traveled into or out of Iran between October 2000 and February 2001.”

But Montague is fixated on the numbers. “To start, many observers were quick to point out that 19 terrorists, not 12, were involved in the attacks.”

You read that right: a New York Times reporter really is suggesting that the vice president has no clue how many hijackers were involved in 9/11.

My book, Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran, details what the U.S. knew at the time and what was later learned about Iran’s involvement in the 9/11 plot. In addition to the 8 or 10 muscle hijackers who traveled to and from Afghanistan from Iran under the protection of the Quds Force, other operatives cited in the 9/11 Commission report also traveled to Iran, including a Tawfiq bin Attash, aka “Khallad,” and a German-based operative named Ramzi bin al-Shibi. (Hint: that makes 10 to 12).

How do we know this activity was linked to Qassem Suleymani? Because their travel into and out of Iran was coordinated by an individual identified in the 9/11 Commission report as “a senior operative of Hezbollah,” but who we now know was Imad Mugniyeh, a top lieutenant of Suleymani’s from Lebanon. (Mugniyeh was killed in Damascus in February 2008 and has a rap sheet almost as long as Suleymani’s and Osama bin Laden’s).

Mugniyeh never lifted a finger – not in Iraq, not in Lebanon, or in Syria, or Afghanistan or Iran –  without Suleymani’s approval. I wrote about Mugniyeh and his role in the 9/11 plot in a 2006 profile that appeared in Reader’s Digest, here.

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Suleymani and his men established a “rat line” to exfiltrate al Qaeda fighters from Afghanistan to Iran.

Hundreds of al Qaeda fighters lived in Iran for many years after 9/11, including top al Qaeda financiers and members of Osama Bin Laden’s own family, under Suleymani’s control.

The Department of Treasury began exposing Iran’s ties to al Qaeda in 2003, when it sanctioned six al Qaeda members working with Abu Musab al-Zarkowi, who headed al Qaeda in Iraq, another group aided by the Quds Force. On the next-to-last day of the Bush 43 administration, Treasury spelled out al Qaeda’s working relationship with Iran in detail.

So there is lots of evidence that Vice President Pence was 100% right – just none of it accessible to the phony newsmen wearing ideological blinders at the New York Times.

When someone pointed out the Times article to me over the weekend, there was a button labeled “suggest a correction,” so I suggested that the reporter look at p. 240 of the 9/11 Commission report, and to be helpful, included a brief quote.

Since then, the Times has removed the correction button, but has not made any corrections. No wonder the President calls them “fake news.”

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EDITORS NOTE: This FrontPage Magazine column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

And Then There Were None

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In 2008, Abby Johnson, the manager of the Bryan, Texas (100 miles from Houston) Planned Parenthood, became that organization’s Employee of the Year.

By 2009, she quit for conscience’ sake. Why?

That year, for the first time, she saw an ultrasound of an abortion of a 13-week old unborn child in her own clinic. This was not a blob of tissue, a clump of cells, a non-living being. This was a baby that was fighting for his life.

Although Abby Johnson was a good salesman of abortions and thought that she was helping women through her work, seeing that baby fighting for his life caused the scales to fall from her eyes.

Abby says that after she saw that ultrasound,

“I knew that I had been part of a lie. I had been a part of a corrupt system, a corrupt organization, that really preyed upon women in their vulnerable states, and I knew that I needed to leave.”

She has now written a book (with Cindy Lambert) called Unplanned, and PureFlix (“God’s Not Dead”) has now turned that book into an excellent movie.

Abby Johnson has also started an outreach, And Then There Were None (ATTWN), to help abortion workers leave the field. I have interviewed Abby before and have previously written about her story. But here is an update about ATTWN, since I interviewed for Christian television two of her assistants at ATTWN recently.

One of them is Meagan Weber, who told me,

“[Abby] wrote her book hoping that a worker would pick it up as a skeptic and see the truth, and see themselves through her words, and within three months of her book’s release in 2011, she had 17 abortion workers contact her for help.”

In effect, Abby and those 17 workers became the beginning of her work to help transition abortion clinic workers out of the field. Her reasoning is simple. She says in her ATTWN website, abortionworker.com,

“We always say that nobody grows up wanting to work in the abortion industry. Nobody. Our vision statement for ‘And then there were none’ is ‘No abortion clinic workers, no abortion clinics, no abortions’—it starts with the workers. We see ourselves as being part of a pro-love movement. That we want to love these workers out of the clinics. We want to love them to a path of healing, and we want to love them back into a relationship with Jesus Christ.”

As an abortion worker, Abby Johnson had thought that what she was doing at Planned Parenthood was helping women. But she learned the hard way that the real bottom line of Planned Parenthood was its bottom line.

Weber, who serves as Abby Johnson’s Assistant, told me, “They asked her to increase the number of abortions at her facility by half, and so she said, ‘Don’t we tell the media that we want to reduce the number of abortions to make them safe, legal, and rare?’ And her supervisor laughed and said, ‘Well, Abbey, how do you think we make our money?’ And she really was blindsided by that.”

Weber also says, “Leaving your job in the abortion industry is not like leaving your job in a fast food outlet. It has the same high turnover rate, but you don’t just leave your job, you leave your friends, you leave your ideology…you go from one day championing women’s rights and abortion rights to the next day having to humble yourself and say, ‘I was wrong. I was part of a very evil system,’ and they have to come to terms with that. So there is a lot of emotional trauma, and there is abandonment.”

I also have spoken with Laura Ricketts of ATTWN for Christian television. She observed, “As we walk through the process of healing them, as we meet their practical needs with financial assistance, with resume writing, with jobs search help, as we help them pay their bills, get back on their feet, once their practical needs are met, they are ready to meet their emotion and spiritual needs.”

So far the organization has been able to help hundreds of clinic workers get out of the abortion field. Meagan states, “And so here we are seven years later, and we’ve helped 550 workers and 7 full-time doctors.”

The movie alone helped cause about a hundred abortion clinic workers to respond…to consider coming out. Ricketts told me, “I think one of the most exciting things about the movie is the impact it had across the country and now across the world. We saw hearts changed, abortion clinic workers leaving their jobs.”

Abby Johnson says, “My story is really an exposé. It’s pulling back the curtain into an industry that has been normalized. Abortion has been so incredibly normalized in our society, and it’s anything but normal.”

© All rights reserved.

Democrats Grasping At Straws To Impeach Trump Now Regret Banning Straws

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WASHINGTON, D.C.—Democrats desperately grasping at straws to find grounds to impeach and convict Trump announced Tuesday they are now regretting banning plastic straws.

“We started grasping for straws but suddenly realized we had banned them a while back,” a downcast Nancy Pelosi told reporters. “We really should have seen this coming.”

Many congresspeople keep straws on hand for the express purpose of grasping at them. They get them out when they really don’t like a politician on the other side of the aisle and need to find something to condemn him or her for. Sadly, the Democrats banned their straws a while back for using harmful plastics and now have nothing to grasp for.

The Democratic leaders tried to reach for paper straws instead, but they instantly crumbled into a fine powder.

Babylon Bee subscriber John Sherman contributed to this report. If you want to get involved with the staff writers at The Babylon Bee, check out our membership options here!

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EDITORS NOTE: This political satire by The Babylon Bee is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

Rep. Jayapal: Trump ‘Recklessly Assassinated’ Iran’s Soleimani

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Rep. Pramila Jayapal declared on Wednesday that “there was no raw evidence” of an “imminent threat” to justify killing Iranian terrorism chief Qasem Soleimani, whom President Trump “recklessly assassinated.”

After a classified congressional briefing on the air strike which vaporized Soleimani, Jayapal stated, “President Trump recklessly assassinated Qasem Soleimani. He had no evidence of an imminent threat or attack, and we say that coming from a classified briefing where again, there was no raw evidence presented that there was an imminent threat.”

That’s not what the Pentagon avowed in a statement confirming the death of the terrorist leader: “General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region. This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans.”

Had former President Obama eliminated Soleimani, Democrats would be praising his bold, decisive strategy. But anything Trump does must be condemned.

Pramila Jayapal

6 Known Connections

Jayapal believes:

  • all women should have not only the right to undergo an abortion at any stage of pregnancy, but also to receive a government subsidy for an abortion if they are in financial need;
  • the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) should serve as a stepping stone toward the eventual implementation of a government-run healthcare system, which Jayapal describes as “Medicare For All”;
  • all employers, public and private, should be legally required to implement affirmative-action hiring and promotion policies that give preference to nonwhites and women, as compensation for historical injustices;
  • U.S. defense spending should be scaled back dramatically;
  • wealthy people should be required to pay much higher tax rates than those who earn less;
  • voter ID laws are racially motivated attempts to suppress minority voting and should be eliminated.

To learn more, click on the profile link here.

Search our constantly growing database of the left and its Agendas

RELATED TWEET: Watch as Secretary of State Pompeo holds back a laugh when ask if Soleimani was on a peace mission.

EDITORS NOTE: This Discover The Networks column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.